 Well, now that you've had a good start and a good taste of the side of a treat, sometimes for some you may be feeling the draw and the relaxation of it, and for many it may be stirring up the hornet's mess a bit down there, because I feel like I've said many times the fastest way for spiritual awakening is a combination of silence and using relationships. That's like a double whammy for the ego, because silence is like going and taking a stick inside the hornet's mess and just jabbing in there, shaking the mess. The queen is disturbed, so you take a stick and you put it right in the mess. You're not even supposed to go near the mess. The work of bees and all the drums are supposed to make sure you don't even get near the mess, but when you go dipping into silence voluntarily, then it's kicking the stick right in the hornet's mess, swirling around in there. And then of course relationships when you're with a group of people that you haven't been with, there's a lot of mirroring that goes on. In that sense, you can be testy as well, sticking another stick in the hornet's mess and moving it around, because basically the ego is maintained through hiding, repression and denial and the silence is a movement towards undoing that denial. And then also the use of relationships for mirroring and forgiveness is a very fast track as well, because it brings into awareness what needs to be released in a more rapid way. So I think it is very helpful to remember that forgiveness and spiritual awakening is not really a matter of things and doing and form, it's really a matter of desire. It can be very, very rapid if you desire for it to be rapid, so the ego dismantling can be very rapid. And for many, if not most, it's, as Jesus says, each is given a slowly evolving curriculum. That's more the norm. And yet it need not be very long and slow and tedious. It can be more rapid if that's your desire. But it's really your desire over this moment, your desire for this moment. It's a self-honesty of this what I truly want, because this world is a world of distraction and a world of isolation and a world of hiding, hiding from the light. And if you really have that be a prayer of your heart of wanting to experience the love of the light, then the symbols can be given quite rapidly and it can be a fairly quick escape from time and space. But it does take a willingness to let everything up into awareness. And there are certain things that are so heavily reinforced and so believed to be true that that truth can seem to be a threat to those things. And I appreciated how modern day scientists and businesses have been able to start to point out some of these things to us. There's a scientist, some of you may have heard of Brian Green, but he's done lots of experiments to show what Einstein discovered decades ago that the time and space are not fixed and they're not absolute, they're relative. And so it contradicts human common sense, because human beings are part of a product of a belief system and so is time and space, even the increments of time and space, whether we call them inches and feet and yards and miles or the increments of time, milliseconds and seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years, those are not solid set increments, but even the perception of time and space is subject to belief and will change. And that contradicts human common sense that says one second in the United States is the same as one second in Korea is the same as one second in Russia, same as one second in England. Common sense would say one second is one second, wherever that second is experienced, but when they've done experiments with atomic clocks and flying one around the earth at supersonic speeds and up the other on the earth and in the plain land with the atomic clocks, the clocks don't match. The gravity actually, it turns out, is involved in time and space. And you know, the Matthew Mohane movies, interstellar, yeah, that was probably one of the most striking examples when they are close to a black hole in the gravitational pull, which shows how relative time is and gives you a real dramatic sense of one second is not one second, one year is not one year, these are just subjective increments that are determined by the mind. And so it can be that way with your awakening, you know, it can be very sad to think that it will take a long, long, long time to wake up from a dream of guilt and fear. It could be a depressing thought of how long it will take. And yet my experiences have been with the chorus and with miracles and that the repinity with which Jesus can work with the mind is quite amazing. It's a matter of desire, it's not a matter of time. And even in the 1990s with my early students, they would say, well, David, if I had your situation, I could wake up a lot faster, but here's my situation, and everybody would always describe what they described as too entangled, too complicated, and nothing to work with. Like Jesus has nothing to work with. Then there are the fortunate ones that have the fortunate situations, and it just doesn't work that way. There aren't the lucky ones and the unlucky ones, the fortunate ones and the unfortunate ones. We all are subject to the same experience, and truth has no exceptions. So that's a good thing. We're all subject to the same belief system, the ego and the same limits, and we're also subject to the same intuition, spirit, guide, and we all have equal access to that, and therefore that's the good news. It's all really a matter of desire. So I think there can be themes that will arise in the silence when you have that spaciousness that you have given yourself permission to have the spaciousness. One theme is sacrifice, that there's a belief that it will require a sacrifice to give up the things, the time, the space, the things, the possessions, whatever, the aspects of your worldly situation, that it will require a sacrifice to let them go. And that's again coming from the belief that what was made to take the place of eternal love has value. That's the root for sacrifice, that the temporary has been given value, it's been desired. And Jesus says in the Course, you can escape from the world through your desire. Just as your awareness of truth was lost by your desire for something else, you can't escape from this world by your desire. By desiring the love, by desiring the light, by desiring truth, everything will be reconfigured and orchestrated for the awakening. Everything without exception will be orchestrated just by a shift in desire. What do I want? How do you answer that question? What do I want? What do I want? Has all power and glory. It activates the prayer in you. It activates your power by desiring the truth. And so sacrifice is the belief that what was made to take the place of truth has value, which is another way of saying that awakening to divine love has a cost. Like somehow it will cost you something very dear. And this is the life. And that's what's been amazing for me is to watch that despite desiring the truth, that what seems so solid, the obstacles that seem to be so huge and so tall, pass away, fall away, these figments of imagination, they aren't real blocks. There's one time Helen Schuchman was with Jesus and in her mind they came upon these mountains, very, very tall mountains, like the Himalayas or the Rockies, a closer to home metaphor, and she could slip to Jesus and she said, now what? Now what do we do? Because the enormity of the mountains was so apparent to her, like there was no accessible way that she had in her mind for overcoming the mountains. And basically Jesus said, take my hand and we'll go through them. That just wasn't a possibility that she had entertained going through the mountains. Take my hand and we'll go through them. But that's how it works with giving yourself over to Christ. Also this is a world of control and you don't give up control of a world of control unless you have a desire to let it go. And you can't just do it by snapping your fingers. You actually have to have a surrender moment where you surrender control of the personality, control of the life circumstances, control of the world, of trying to orchestrate personally the world and let that be under Christ's control. You say, here I give it back to you. I haven't been able to do anything that truly sets me free, so I need to give over. I need to surrender control. The quantum love song that Christian receives is called Under Christ Control. It's like you're giving control of the entire world back to Christ and saying, you use it now. You bend it. You shape it. You change it. You do whatever it takes. You are in charge of all the symbols of the world because that's the only way I'll be free of them. The only way that they could be reinterpreted to my mind is by giving up control over them. And so that is a huge step. And during the silent retreat, you can see that comes into play immediately where there's, if you even have guidelines or things that you're not accustomed to that the ego is stirred up out of its hornet's nest and wants to try to control things. Oftentimes in, like, vipassana retreats and sometimes retreats, or even in various monasteries and condensates, they will have so many rituals because the mind is so accustomed to structure that it freaks when it's out of the structure. It's almost like a fish jumping out of the water onto the sand and starts flipping and freaking around when it's away from that. This world has so much control and so much structure that it can be a state of panic when there's not that structure. And I would say over the years we've had many, many retreats and oftentimes we do have quite a lot of structure just because it's a transition transitioning. I think the first retreat we did where we didn't have any structure at all I think was Mystery Bay, interesting name for a retreat in Mystery Bay, Australia. But Mystery Bay, we whiteboarded the entire, it was a weekend for several days. It was entirely whiteboarded. So everyone was just swimming around like a lot of little fish and then looking at the whiteboard like, what's happening? And that also, along with silence, that will stir the mind up because it's become accustomed to ritual and repetition. Oh, it's a new day. I will shower, brush my teeth, you know, there's a regimen. The mind becomes quite addicted to time and to structure and this is going in the other direction. So some of you might have seen the movie The Truman Show and even when the serious light comes down and lands in the street, even when he finds when he gets in an elevator that there's no back, there's no walls of the elevator, there's just people running around. Even when he starts to see signs and symbol, but it's all just a set, including Sylvia crashing onto the sentences, you know, the drills, picking up the sand, it's all for you. He's trying to say it very rapidly. He still goes to work. He still goes home. He's still going through the rituals that seem to be his life in Seahaven. He doesn't just leap up in the movie and go for the exit door. There's too much fear. There's too many ingrained rituals. He continues on, but little by little he starts to realize that the setup, even a very controlled environment, that his whole life is being broadcast and that he's simply an actor among actors where everything is controlled. It's just a giant TV set. But it takes time for that reinterpretation of the world. It takes him some time. It takes him the spirit's use of time to reinterpret that, to even come to a place where he sees an escape hatch. And it will seem to take some time for those dark thoughts, those attack thoughts to come up. But again, think of yourself as you're sticking that stick in the hornet's nest. And instead of just leaving the hornet's nest alone, you're actively sticking the stick in there. And the hornets are shooting out. Lots of them shooting out. And those are like attack thoughts. Those hornets are grievances. Those hornets are attack thoughts. Those hornets are things are not going right. And I've been harmed and I've been injured. And they're flying all over the place in the mind. Another thing is this feeling of like, feeling like, wow, if I really go for this, what will be asked of me and what will become of my life in this world? What will become of my familiar scenes? What will become of my family? What will become of my friends? It's the fear of the unknown. The past, the script has become so familiar now that the mind has become addicted to the familiar. And it actually believes that the familiar is love and that to leave behind the familiar is to move into chaos, is to move into the unknown, is to move into death. It seems like you will die if you leave the familiar. When, in fact, you have no real opportunity to know eternal life unless you are willing to let go of the familiar. It's the repetition, the repetition game that makes things seem familiar and that's what the ego uses. And that's why the ego will even take something like religion, which to me is not really theology. It's a state of mind, it's a peaceful experience of the moment. It's what true religion was intended to be. And the ego is so afraid of that moment and so afraid of that peace that it is completely ritualized and made theology and concepts out of what was supposed to be a simple moment of release. It's turned it into a complicated scheme that is designed to keep you from knowing who you are. Very recently I was watching Bill Maher's movie Religulous. Religulous, he combines two words, religious and ridiculous. Religulous and he points out all the contradictions goes after Islam, he goes after Judaism, he goes after Christianity, he goes after branches of Christianity. Nothing is sacred except to point out how silly the contradictions are. And that's part of freeing your mind from the ego. You have to begin to see the contradictions, things that don't match up, things that don't fit together. We notice those things. Sometimes we do need a stand-up comedian to come along. Bill Maher is just the first in a string community that some people know, George Carlin. He was quite fond of pointing out contradictions. There was another longer comedian named Gallagher, where he was always pointing out contradictions. I think about the one Bill, something he saw recently. He was really good too, I think it was his last name. He was so good at pointing out contradictions and everybody would laugh when they would hear the contradictions because something inside knows that they aren't true. Something inside is longing to be free of the contradictions and therefore laughs at the contradictions. So the other thing that is important when you look at the familiarity is to start to realize that when you look at the things that seem to be very important, even in terms of relationship, you have to free your mind of the belief that the meaning and the value and the love is in the relationships as you remember them or as you seem to know them. That in the Bible it says that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. So many of us who have been raised in the Judeo-Christian culture, Judeo-Christian world, Judeo-Christian society have been raised with the idea that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and even that, which seems very, very basic, is corrected in a course of miracles. Jesus says, no, the body is not the temple of the Holy Spirit. Your relationship is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Your relationships, how you relate to your brothers, your sisters, that attitude that you relate to your brothers and sisters is the temple. And so if you have blocks, then the temple has been defiled. If you're holding on to grievances and the temple has been defiled, if you break off communication and say, no, this one and I, we are not on speaking terms. We have not spoken for years. We will not speak to each other that is an indication that the temple has been defiled because the relationship is the temple and that the attitude is what it's all about. And therefore it's not even so important as like something like taking care of the body. It's taking care of your state of mind and maintaining open communication and integrity and honesty in relationship is where the care needs to go. In fact, Jesus will say that you have no control over the world and even the body and trying to take direct control over the body is still trying to take control where there is no control and that can be through conditioning and watching systems of nutrition, watching systems of exercise, rituals around the body. That's all part of a system to maintain the belief in separation. And we are taught that a healed mind is what the mind should focus on. Health is inner peace. That the focusing on the body as a source of health is a defense against the truth. We have no business trying to focus our mind on a healthy body. Actually, Jesus would say healthy body is a contradiction in terms when you're in touch with your soul, when you're in touch with your source, when you're in touch with the love and the light in your mind and everything will radiate from that halter being lined up with source. And therefore, you find that as you focus more and more on your purpose and your function, you focus less and less and less on the body. That goes against all the conditioning of putting all the focus on the body and hoping the mind will follow. But it doesn't work that way. If you focus on the mind and the healing of the mind, the body will follow. The body is just help picturing the projection of the mind. So he does have metaphors. The body's health is guaranteed if you're following the Holy Spirit, if you're in line with the source. But even that's just a metaphor for bringing it back to start to see that you want to put your full attention on a healed mind. Some of you know about eclipses, solar eclipses, lunar eclipses. Well, you might say that when what you're going for is a total eclipse where what's in your foreground is the mind and what's in the background is the body in the world. And you want a total eclipse where you put such a focus on your purpose that eventually the thoughts of the body cease to demand your attention. You no longer give body thoughts your attention. There are thoughts in your mind that come from God and there are thoughts in your mind that come from the ego. And all thoughts are endowed with equal power. So the separation is giving those ego thoughts the same power as you give to the thoughts of God, the same power. And when you give the power of the ego thoughts as much as the power of those loving life thoughts of God, that's a split mind. No mind can serve two masters in the Bible. It says you cannot serve both God and mammon, God and money, but money is just a symbol for the ego. It's not really about the money, it's about the purpose. You cannot serve two purposes and have peace of mind. And that's what the meaning of no man can serve two masters. You cannot endow all these thoughts in your mind with equal meaning when some of them are unreal and some of them are real. Because when you endow all these thoughts with equal meaning, then you are saying, part of me is unreal and part of me is real. Part of me was made and fabricated and invented and part of me was created by God and I'm just going to give equal meaning to all of that. But that's not God's will. God's will is the perfect happiness. So this is an erroneous attempt to give equal meaning to all thoughts that seem to be in the mind. It's a weaving, shifting pattern of dark and light that by now the sleeping mind has become accustomed to this. It's not natural at all. It has dark and light weaving the whole time. That's why people sometimes say, well, I've got this committee going on and they're always talking many voices and they're always meeting and never stop meeting. It's just an ongoing meeting that's going on and on and on and the committee keeps meeting and they keep making these decisions and this committee is running my life now and it never stops. They're never not in a meeting. They're always in a session. They never rest. It's a pattern of shifting, weaving, changing thoughts, dark thoughts and light thoughts. The mind has become accustomed to this and now it calls it the human condition. And what it's covering over is divine love and light, divine peace. So that's a good first step. You notice I think when you come on a side retreat you're even more aware of the committee because I think there's less distractions and then it's almost like this committee is intolerable. We must bring an end to this committee. It's time for the session to be over. So yeah, there's an honesty to that. Like, okay, I'm not going to interpret and draw a conclusion based on this committee but there's some part deep inside me that I can contact the power of prayer, the power of source, the power of who I am and say yes, let's join together and bring an end to the committee for once and for all. One of the mechanisms that ego will have you do is when you do get glimmers of light that start to come through and we could call these little prompts or guidances or little nudges, the ego will try to run, rush in and dispel the guidance, dispel the nudge, dispel the little prompt. Like in the Truman Show, progressively he starts to get these little nudges and these little prompts but every time he sees a scene where something happens where there's no explanation, like seeing his father who supposedly has already passed away gets shoved into a bus by a homeless person, looked like a homeless person but this person came up, ladies shoved him into the bus. He doesn't know what that's about. His mother gets out the photo album with his wife and they try to explain it way well. You're seeing things, you just miss your father. When he sees things, when the serous light comes down immediately on the car radio of planes flew by and started shedding parts. There's always an explanation when he starts to sense that there's something beyond sea haven and he goes to the travel agency with a big picture of a plane getting hit split in half by a bolt of lightning when he goes to even buy a ticket to leave his familiar sea haven. Every turn the ego is going to try to explain away really a symbol where spirit is just saying you're more than this world, you're not really trapped, you're actually free, you can set yourself free, you seem to be in a prison but you have no external jailer, you hold the key, you could simply reach around through the bars with the key that you already have in your hand and unlock the gates and push it open and walk free. In any instance, you have the power. When the device you always have had the power to go Glenda, the good witch, you always had the power. So as you notice, your guidances that can come through during this sign of a treat also watch as the ego tries to dispel the guidance and says you can't do that, that's too much, that's too far, that's asking too much, that's too risky, it's going to come in with a barrage of reasons why you can't reach around and open that lock and simply walk out of the prison. You will try to say all kinds of reasons. Before this retreat started, I was looking around on night one because I was looking around for Marie, I guess Marie had been here. I got to meet Marie once just very briefly. We had a long hug and in five minutes, she poured out her heart of all the experiences she's had in the last three months and she's just, I just was like, wow, she's, she just, I think she first heard of my name in July. She started just watching so many videos, listening to audios, using every spare moment she could, like she was just breathing in the love and the light and really rapidly moving her mind toward the escape hatch. And even though I just met her very briefly over there at campus, she was already allowing the Holy Spirit to completely reconfigure her worldly situation, her perception of her life, her, her career was coming to a rapid close. She had gone through so many shifts that she began to talk about her direction, what she was going to do. I guess she's planning to just come and join our community like Calico's talked about. And even going in and talking to her boss and explaining where she'd be going, what she'd be doing, going to, going to a 30-day mystery school next spring, her boss saying, oh, we'll pay for half of the company, the company will pay for half of her mystery school out here at the monastery. And working out the time, I think, in so many months where she will leave the job, then throwing in lots of benefits, she'd been with this company for many, many years, but when she really became clear of what her life's purpose was, she spoke it out loud and all the witnesses lined up like angels. Oh, we'll give you a load on extra benefits. We'll do this and this. We're going to make these months the best time that you have with this company. And she came, which was very open about what, using her life for spiritual awakening, what she was doing. There was no hiding, no protecting, no pretending, just diving in, desiring, saying this is how I want my life to be. I want it to be a witness, let this be a witness to the glory of God's love. The only way you wake up from a nightmare is to have a happy dream first. And the only way we move into the happy dream is just the willingness to listen and follow. And to me, that was such a, when I listened to her for those five minutes, I thought, what a glorious witness, what a servant of the most high you are, to step into this just so fully and so directly, to face the fears as they come, but to be clear, have your torch out front, and your light out in front of you, so you can just step through over those obstacles, you don't have your torch behind you, and you're stumbling in the dark like in a cave. Who goes into a cave with the torch behind them, with their torch on the half turned backwards? No one. You have to go with the torch facing forward, you know, let the light shine before you, make the path easy. Step over those obstacles, step over those phantoms, they have no power to hold you back, no power to limit you at all, unless you give them the power to do so. So that's what, when we had our opening night, I was sitting here and everyone was going around and they were like, there's nobody here. Today, if I'm not mistaken, where's Marie? She's gone. She'll be back for the, she'll be back for the mystery school in May. So that, to me, has been the most important thing in my life is to stay open, heating the prompts, the little nudges, moment by moment, not getting ahead of myself, but really heating and paying attention to what is it in this moment that is being shown to me. Give my full attention. I don't have to figure out the steps. That's too complicated. All I have to do is stay for this moment. What is it in this moment that God is putting on my heart? That's all I have to pay attention to. And sometimes it's relax, do nothing, bask, bathe, be. That's not a small thing when your mind is conditioned to do, do, do. How are we thinking about Frank Sinatra's song? It's not even the song, it's how he filled it in doobie doobie doobie doobie doobie doobie. You see the do is the ego and the b is the spirit. Doobie doobie doobie doobie doobie doobie doobie doobie. You see the split mind is falling back, of course. Sinatra didn't realize it, but he was pouring out the entire human condition. Doobie doobie doobie. We can't stop there though. There has to be a point where we honor and heed the great poet, the great writer Shakespeare to be or not to be. That is the question. You go from human doing to human being and then finally to a being, a being of love and light. And it has to go that way. When the mind is so addicted to the doings, it has to be done through. That's a key that we focus on in the spiritual community. What would you have me do? How can I be done through? Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. St. Francis said centuries ago, make me an instrument. You see how that's a transition? Okay, I still believe in the body. I still believe in the doings. So do it through me. How might I serve the whole? How might the actions serve a greater goal than a personal self instead of trying to build a better personal self? That's all that's done. That's our condition. That's what our education is aimed at. That's what our jobs are aimed at. That's what our careers are aimed at is self-improvement. And then this is how may I be done through. I know in my life when I kept focusing on the moment and focusing on the moment, staying present, staying present, that just by that focus on the moment, I guess got happier and happier and happier just by focusing on the moment. That's where the happiness is. And when I put my attention into it, I put my mind energy into the moment and everything else seems to magically get taken care of like a fairy tale. And sometimes when I would start to describe my experiences to people they would say, that's not life. You're just talking about a fairy tale you say well that's kind of how it feels. It feels like a fairy tale. Fairy tales, many of the fairy tales have a likeness about them. You know there's not a lot of logistics in in these fairy tales. You don't hear about credit card balances and debts and all the things that you know most people deal with on a daily basis. They're gone from the fairy tale and that's why we call them fairy tales. There's a fairy tale quality. Even Pollyanna you know. Pollyanna was just so happy that she didn't have her attention on the world. And now Pollyanna has become like a negative pejorative term. When people criticize somebody they go they aren't practical at all. Pollyanna. As if Pollyanna means living in a fantasy world, that Pollyanna was happy. Pollyanna wasn't identified with the fantasy world. That's where the happiness came in. She was not identified with it. That's how she stayed happy. And now he goes flip it around to use it as a defense. Don't get all airy fairy on me and all spiritual. Don't turn Pollyanna. You see it's a strong hammer down against following the joy in your heart. It's like a hammer coming down to smash it and say don't get too happy. Just don't get too happy. That's how vicious the ego is. So these sessions can be great. They're very open and interactive. I want to hear what's happening, what's going on in your minds or if there's anything that you want to raise up as a question like that you're dealing with as you think into the moment. Whatever that wall of resistance comes up as, if it's coming up, yes. And we have a microphone in here. We have a microphone. I appreciate being here because I can feel the Holy Spirit just come, just want to wash in sometimes, wash in. And then, you know, I have these things that come up that kind of like ring tears in my eyes, but and I let that go too because the thing that's crying is not me and the light, the lightest us with me included. And so I'm just dedicated to that when anything comes up. But I noticed that, you know, why everything and listen in. Use the key that is mine. Every time I almost drift off the sleep, I get startled away. I don't do that either. But I guess I'm not going to sleep because that's what's going on. I don't know. But I noticed that and I'm happy to be here because I feel the whole presence that is me and everywhere. Yeah. To me, the practicality is coming in. Like, I think about this experience I had. I think the prayer of the heart was somewhere around 1984 where I just was like, okay, I'm so done with this world and I'm so ready to have a different perception of this world. And then, yeah, and then it's what a ride. What a ride. It's whatever it was, maybe 32 years ago. But it's been such a ride of saying, you know, Jesus take the wheel, you be you in charge. And then the guidance has just has just become so predominant. That's really how we get unwound from our fearful perception of the world. It's through becoming guided and more guided and letting that have ascendance in our mind. Like, oh, yeah, this is, of course, all forces is the only way that the spirit knows the way out. It's such a tangled, complicated, dark web. And we've just woven ourselves so deep. It's like we kept winding ourselves into darkness. Even the things that most of us were raised with that we thought was going to be a part of our salvation, which was education. My mother was was an educator. And education was always the solution. You know, that's why it's important to study and to get good grades to get into college and to go for advanced education because education was seen as the key. And then with the Course in Miracles, Jesus says, no, the problem is learning. Learning is the problem. That you have learned this world of time and space. You have learned this world of duality. You have learned isolation. You have learned you have learned many skills and abilities. You have learned the self concept and the idol image. The problem is the education. The education isn't the solution. And I often say, I don't get invited to university this week. I'm glad to go back to my alma mater of a high school. It's filled with gymnasium. David's coming in to talk about unlearning. I never, ever get back. Academia, even high school, I've never been invited to a preschool. Yeah, you're going to be. It's coming another way. And what am I going to do? It's going to shift away. Yeah. And when I was sitting on the little swing, I think I told Tamara, I said it's like a claiming Christ in me and the Course in Miracles is also that. And I'm listening going, wait a minute, it's called another way. So why don't we just bust it right open? The children are right there. I'm right there. Yeah. So in the past, we over-learned an insane system. And Jesus says you've over-learned this world now. And you never did pause at any point of this over-learning to question what, what was it for? You didn't, all this learning and over-learning, you never paused to ask the question, what is it for? Because at that moment, that pause would have been enough to let the light come in and say, reverse. Like those ship movies where they have to go in the full reverse or in Star Trek, when they get themselves in the briar patch of full reverse, Scotty, full power, like let's get out full reverse. And so that's actually what this side of retreat is, is coming to that moment where you actually see for the first time that the only way out is a full reverse. Not a course correction left or right, not slowing down even, but an absolute reverse. And I've had people who have studied the course and they get into the course and they go, what a strange name, a course in miracles, a text, a workbook, and a manual, and at some point in those 1200 pages it dawns like, oh my god, even the course is disguised as a course. Because what is a course but learning? And at one point I remember I was doing the course and I just got the biggest smile on my face and I'm like, you joker. You put this great awakening curriculum in the form of a course. You baited the ego, you baited it. It's favorite thing in all the universe is learning and you baited it with a course of miracles. And then at some point you see it's full stop reverse. It's absolutely unlearning. I noticed that too when I was doing the course because when you came to see me and I just had this beautiful feeling of I saw the love light before your face and I didn't know what that meant so I'm like, oh I'm going to find out what that meant. And I learned the whole course. I mean I just, it was good because I would listen to it all day long as much as I could wherever I was. But I learned it and then I was saying to Eric, but then I got caught up in it. You know I got too caught up in it was just like, okay, okay what am I doing with this and it could be this and it could be that. And I just got tripped up on it also. So then I had to relax. I listened to the Holy Spirit and I realized I didn't know anything. You know at that point I was just like, wow this guided me and I don't know anything and I can't possibly know anything. And I said to Eric when he was there a couple weeks ago I said, you know there's this thing. Okay, let me figure this out. I'm going to figure this out, this course out. And it feels like that. And then there's this other thing. And it's not even a thinking about it. It's not like a, oh I wonder really, it's just like a, oh my goodness. Two different things. Completely. The only one is real. When you hit the full stop and then you kick into the reverse there's such a joy and a glee. It's like children know glee, children know fun, children know play. That's the feeling that comes from the full reverse. Because you're at this point you don't, you're not going to hold history against your mind. Even a seeming history of learning and over learning, you're not going to hold it against your mind. The unlearning has begun. It's like when that love light, you know, when the holy instant comes in, it's the love light and that's all it is. And it's everywhere and it's us and it's me and it's that, you know, gratitude breath. Just all you can do is go, oh that's all I can do. And I know we're all in it. And there's nothing missing and we're all together in that. But we don't have to worry about what we know in that. So when I'm not in the holy instant, I remember it's not anything that I really have to figure out. But I do try anyway. So I'm truly excited to know what being done through is. And I'm listening in feeling, I don't know if I hear, but if I write, I can hear sometimes. So grateful for you for showing me. You know, we were just meant to undo this. Yeah, you can feel the power of this instant because I remember that part in the, in the, in Truman Show again, the movie where he sees Sylvia, he's dancing and he just sees, he sees her and his eyes are drawn to her and he's drawn so strong. And then when he finally meets her in the library, you know, he's just drawn even stronger. And basically she whispers to him, if we don't go now, it's not going to happen. That's such a profound message. We don't go now. In other words, this whole thing is so scripted and so tightly controlled. But if we don't seize the moment, if we don't go now, it's not going to happen. The ego will always try to push it off into the future. Oh, I'll do this after I handle this and this then, but the point of release, the activation point has to be in the now. And then, and then she takes his hand and they, they leave the scenario, the cameras are searching for him and they go racing down towards the beach and they go running down to the beach and they go down to the beach and they're both so in the moment. And then that's when they have this long passionate kiss. It just totally takes them over because they've gone and they've left the scripted world. They didn't go outside the range of the cameras because they're so determined to be free. That's what is required. You might also remember that when, when Truman is talking to his wife, Merrill, and he starts to say what he's going to do and where he's going to go, that the ego is so clever and so ingenious and it's been given so much power that it literally blocks, it sets up a roadblock of traffic so he cannot leave Seahaven. But very shortly after that he goes down and he realizes, he learns from that, that he has to not give away his plan of escape. The ego will use his plans of escape to keep them trapped even. And so he goes around and around this roundabout in a high speed. And he goes, I'm having a spontaneous moment. He's honking the horn and Merrill gets very frightened as he goes round and round and round. He comes shooting off the roundabout this time and he goes to the same, same highway and there's no cars. He goes, look Merrill, no cars. Because you're blaming me for the traffic? He said, should I? He's, he's learned even from being blocked that it's like, okay, ego, fool me once. I'm not letting you in on my next move. I'm going to go with the Holy Spirit and be free. I'm not going to even try to forecast my awakening because the ego will try to use that to stop you. And that can happen, you know, even when you have to be guided on who you even talk about this awakening with. You start to talk it and share with certain ones and then all of a sudden they seem to be part of a plot, a conspiracy to keep you from doing what you just said you wanted to do. They're just showing up everywhere. Oh, you can't do it. No, it's not going to work. Be careful, be frightened, be frightened, you know, because the ego will try to use the power of the mind to, to shut off the unlearning, shut off the full stop in the reverse in any way possible. It doesn't care even if you slow down the learning, as long as you still keep marching in the wrong direction. You can go from a swift march to a slow hesitant march and the ego's like, good enough. At least you're walking towards death. And it doesn't mind if you come to a crawl. But as long as you're crawling towards death, instead of before you were running and now you come to a crawl, it's still pleased. You're in the wrong direction. I just, I just have to share that's too perfect, what you're just saying. You know, I came for personal devotion two months ago and I really got into bunny gazing. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. And so I really, I mean, it was, it was not an easy process necessarily. I, you know, and I really think a lot of course students have an illusion this is easy. There's nothing fucking easy about this. Nothing. And so I was here, processed, did what I did, you know, packed the car to go. And, you know, I don't know if James had any idea what he did, but he was the last person. He ran over the car, stuck his head in the car, and hugged me. And I, in my head, what I was saying to myself was, I'm so glad this is over. I was so relieved. I'm leaving. Thank God. And, you know, he hugged me and it was kind of this, this weird like reminder of why I came in the first place. But I quickly dispelled him and put him in my rear view window and just hustled down the canyon. When I got out beyond Duchenne, I started having bunny sightings. And they were dead bunnies. And I was laughing. Every time I saw a dead bunny, I started laughing hysterically because it's like, you know, stay and live as far as the material or leave and die. Your choice. And so when I started processing this and seeing all the dead bunnies and laughing hysterically, having the best time, then I started to go, okay, I don't have to be a dead bunny. I don't even have to move in that direction. And as soon as I started looking at that, it was funny. Bunnies would shoot out in the road. And that road between here and there was, there was nothing anyway. So all I was doing was playing with the bunnies all the way back. And by the time I got halfway down the road, I didn't see any more dead bunnies. And the bunnies that would run out and I swear, I would close my eyes and just go, holy spirit, help me see this differently. And I'd go by and I'd look in the rear view minute mirror and the bunnies ran across the street. So they, they basically were running under the car, but they weren't getting hit. And it was just, by the time I got back to Santa Fe, I was so amused with myself. It's like, well, of course I'm going back. I mean, of course I'm going to be joining community. What would, what would keep me here? So I just, I had to share my bunny story. Or did you want to respond to that? You spoke of the curriculum being sent. And I know it says that in the course. And then you said that once we set our desire, that things are reconfigured. And I know when I started with the course, things just blew up like my daughter was going through terrible things. And I just never caved. I was late. Or I think one minute I want to kill this guy. And then the next is like, no, no, that's right. It's not real. It's the dream, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, how did the dream get reconfigured? I'm interested. Well, that's what the miracle's purpose is. The miracle is to collapse time to bring the alpha and the omega beginning the end back together just to see it all simultaneously. And it gets reconfigured by purpose that, that in the ego's linear perception of the world, everything has a different purpose. And it's all based on the past. Even, even a glass, a glass of water, you know, it's, it has a meaning given to it. It's a part from all the other objects in time and space. A glass of water is distinct from every other object in all time and space. And it relates to the body, you know, because a glass of water isn't just in a vacuum. There's, there's fingers holding in at this moment. Fingers of what? Fingers of the body. You'll notice that the body will come back, these associations with the body with everything. You know, when we look through telescopes or, you know, very powerful microscopes in astronomy, at stars that have long since burned out, we're just seeing the, the light from something that's already gone dark. It's already not there. We're just beholding it, but it's through the body's eyes and the body's perception. Even the star, from a glass of water to the stars is all the past. So the reconfiguring is going to be a way of seeing everything without exception in a new way. And it has to loosen from the past experiences, family, like a daughter. There's a lot tied into that daughter concept. And it's very related to a mother concept and a father concept. And there's all kinds of associations, like a kaleidoscope. You can turn the kaleidoscope and the colors can shift into many patterns and configurations. But there has to be a way of seeing those configurations in a completely new way with no, nothing from the past read into the meaning. So it's a, you might say it's a way of kind of neutralizing or leveling the playing field, where you can come into this inner joy and the body's eyes still seem to report differences, but the interpretation in the mind has shifted so completely that you are in the quantum moment. You're in the quantum field. You're in the forgiven world of the Holy Spirit, where it doesn't have any meaning in and of itself. The joy, the glee, the love, the happiness is like a point, a pinpoint of light from which the whole cosmos can be perceived in a new way. Completely fresh, like this movie Solaris that I use a lot, where even the characters that show up near Solaris are all just what was read, the meaning that was given them from the past. They're really not whole and complete. They're just segments of the past. So this reconfiguring can only be done by the Holy Spirit, and that's why it doesn't have a human component to it. And Jesus says you may be quite distressed to think that you have so little contribution to the truth. It's so humbling. It gets more humbling and more humbling and more humbling. You come more into that, I do not know when anything is for moments, where you let it be stripped, cleaned, cleared out of all debris of what you thought it was for, and then the light of the Holy Spirit can shine upon it and only can shine on it when the other has been dropped, when the past has been dropped. So it's a reconfiguration in terms of relationships. I just posted on Facebook today how this reconfiguration occurs where you start to just draw people, things, events into your awareness that support your whole mind, the whole mind. They're happy reflections, and it starts to fill up with more and more of these happy reflections. As long as there's still a contrast, then it's not the real world. It's not the happy dream, because the real world doesn't have conflicting or contrasting symbols, just all symbols of love. Everything becomes unified. I think what you notice in Heal Perception is that everything is given so effortlessly. Years ago, I had this intuitive feeling, and maybe it even came to me when I was first in kindergarten, because my kindergarten teacher, we took naps, we had snacks, no subjects. Kindergarten was very much fun to me, and some of you remember that book, everything I learned in kindergarten. That was kind of my experience. I felt it was a very wonderful experience, because everything seemed to be eagerly provided, but I do remember it seemed like that the one thing that my kindergarten teacher tried to teach me was, let's all share. That was like the curriculum, let's all share. We cleaned things up together, we made things together. It was a community experience in kindergarten. Everything was provided effortlessly, and we were taught in every day, in every situation, to share. They're dawned on me at some point in my life where I thought, where have I gone off from that? Why all this education, why this need to possess, why this need to own thing for myself in a personal way? What happened? How did I get off into this strange thing? To me, that's a big aspect of what the reconfiguring is, where things can all get used, but it's all in a very shared spirit, like where all of this together is kind of a feeling underneath it. It seems radical to the ego, this idea of sharing everyone because, oh that sounds pretty dangerous, because it's so away from the norm now, but yet for me that's the way that it's come. That's one of the principles I feel like that I guide. I see that ideas are strengthened as they're shared, so I've enjoyed letting the Holy Spirit speak through me and share through me and laugh through me and hug through me and shine through me. It's become a little spooky at first. It seems weird and strange and awkward and all those things, and then I kept persisting and saying, no this feels really good. I'm coming back to that. And it also takes a lot of trust because a lot of this idea of possession and personal ownership and personal everything, personal silverware, I used to wonder why do people have to have their own silverware? It seems like we should be able to share that at least. It started to be like there was so much fear tied in underneath that that's why personal learning, personal control was used as an defense against that sharing. So that's what I've noticed and I started looking at the communities many, many years ago and studying them, studying the history of communities, what worked, what didn't work, going around and living in different communities as an experience. I never even had any intention to do that my whole life, but I thought, no, I need to experience how this can work. And then all of that kind of culminated in taking the course, such a high curriculum of unlearning and then saying why not apply that in a practical way with everything and every one and do it as a big experiment and give the experiment over to the Holy Spirit. So that to me has been the reconfiguring, that's how it's gone. And no one that I know of, no one in our communities ever had thoughts of that, no one ever dreamed of it as a child or as a teenager, even into young and old, none of us were ever talking about it. It never even entered the conversation. So it's been like the miracle is an out-of-pattern experience. You don't see it coming. It's like Jesus saying I'm going to use things that you don't see coming. You have no past reference point for it to take you out of your stuckness and free your mind. And that's what Morpheus does with Neo. He's always sending him into different experiences to see the work and training experiences and so forth that are pretty intense. But they're all, they have a newness, a freshness and even says to him, what is this about? He says I'm here to free your mind. It's just very clear the purpose there out front. I'm having a difference I've never had before in the course for many, many years. But probably since I've been here, this is the worst I can remember feeling continuously. And prior to coming here, I mentioned that once I made the decision and contacted Susanne and decided to come to retreat, things got steadily worse. Physical problems I never dreamed I would have. And since coming here, it's persisted the opposite. I have many, certainly a number of really beautiful, miracle breakthroughs, but this isn't what I've experienced. It's the opposite. It's painful. It's almost continuous. Getting to meals is an effort. Sleep is a great refuge. I view it as my ego's last hurrah. I think that each day and the seven degrees true each day, it is a bit better. But during this period, especially since arriving here, I certainly think about the ego's way out as opposed to spirits I guess way in. But it's not anything I've ever experienced. I just had to do this as an invitation for all these feelings that seemed to possess me. I just turned it all over, off to no resistance. But never in these many years have I had an experience like this. Yeah, I'm glad you're bringing that up. Because when I worked with the course for all these years, for myself, I started with 86 in 1986, but I was always saying to Jesus, can you give me the gist? Just give me the gist. I need the gist because I know that if I can just get the gist of it all, that I can give myself over to practicing the gist. I'll give myself fully over to the gist if I just know what the gist is. And one time Jesus said to me, well, it's real simple. He said, you can't bring the truth into the illusion. The gist is you have to bring the illusions to the truth. He said, that's the basis of all of it. You don't need the 1200 words. It's just bringing your illusions to the truth, bringing the darkness, your beliefs, your thoughts to the light, and they will disappear. And so at some point it dawned on me like, well, this is not about theology at all. This is going to be about how willing I am am I to practice the gist? And I have noticed, even in many communities studying many different philosophies and teachings and even going around the course communities all over the world and meeting thousands and thousands of Course and Miracles practitioners, that the greatest temptation is to bring the truth into the illusion. To talk a good talk, to do good talks, workshops, seminars, it's almost like an ego saying, just try to teach this conceptually and read it and talk about it and memorize it and build communities around it and you can commission and have degrees and it will do anything to bring the truth into the illusion. Hang on to the good old standards of what seems to be important in human life. What about that roof over your head? What about that money in the bank? And what about that insurance? All the things that we were all raised with to say, look out for number one, make sure you handle all this first. Then if you get the basics down, you can play. So you better get the basics down before you play. So what happened to me with the course was I started with eight hours a day with like an oracle answering questions for the first two and a half years. And then five years after the course came in my life in 1991, Jesus was like, come on with your mind now. It's like how's the career, how's the jobs, how's the dating, how's everything we're going on a road trip. So I've been on a road trip for 25 years. And I mean it's quite an adventure because it was very clear. He's like, I'm the boss now. I'm in charge. I will tell you what to say, what to do, where to go. And he said what we're starting off with, the beginning of the road trip is no house, nothing. We're going out on the road. He didn't tell me, he would never tell me what was coming, but he took me out of the road for five years from 91 to 96 with no stability as a world would judge it, not knowing from oftentimes from night to night because the sun was going down, not even knowing where I would lay the body into a bed. It was a radical, it was almost like the Sinyasis that I would read about in India, you know, going out and that culture they even have a little bedroom, a guest room for the Sinyasis because there's such a devotion and dedication to self-realization not in America. You know, it's like you find, you're not going to find anybody, it's like out of bed. But you do find a lot, of course, of miracle students that have couches and an extra place to sleep in this and this and this guest room, but it's not necessary, it's more for family and friends of it, but they thought you're a nice guy and you could stay there for a couple nights. So that five-year period of the first five years of the road trip was so extreme that it was almost like saying, oh, you're not bringing the truth into the illusion. I will show you, I will go before you and flood you with so many miracles that the first step was to convince you that that you're not under the laws of this world. You don't have to figure out where you're going to stay. And you know, I know it's not a single motel room, not it's not even one, five years. I was not a single motel, because that's how the world would say, you know, you dip into the old nest egg and go into the motel six or Hilton or something, you know, depending on how how much is in the nest egg, but he didn't give me one single motel room in five years. And yet I had to say at some point I was so convinced like, okay, I can see now that you're in charge and you clearly are orchestrating time and space because nothing of my conditioning could even relate to this. Like this is surreal. This is beyond fairytale quality. This is surreal, absolutely without fail every night, every day. People offering me things, you know, all the pride, I can't accept no, no. And after like me refusing 30 or 40 gifts, Jesus saying to me, you know, stop that. I'm giving you. You're going to slow the progress down as you keep saying no to everything that I offered you. That's me offering you those things, do not other people. So what I have found is that as soon as I was able to open up to that thing that I would not try to the old Frank Sinatra song do it my way, that I was really going to be convinced I actually wanted to be convinced that I that all my 10 years of university, you know, was not going to save me that it actually wasn't impediment in my degrees and my all my learning about survival and security. And I've got quite good at that. That he was like, Oh, no, no, that's that's like a noose around your neck. You know, we have to get you get your head out of that noose in the most rapid way possible. So the experiences that followed were very, very freeing. And what I found was that that there's a line in the healed relationship section of the course, those early chapters of those nine chapters on pulling in special relationships, you know, when you get into starting to 15 and run to 24, the healed relationship section Jesus says it would not be kinder to shift the goal more slowly. That I saw how clever the ego was that as long as my past learning was going to get in there with to try to figure out the way that I was going to block the realization that Christ was aiming at. And so I had a lot of rapid succession contrast experiences where the miracles could kind of flood in. And it was almost like Jesus said, we have to inject you mind with as many miracles as we can get in there to make this change from trying to bring the truth into the illusion, turning it around to bringing the illusion to the truth. And so I often say that that first trip out in 1991 was Jesus said, remember the word, I'm going to knock your socks off. He said, I will knock your socks off. And I needed that because the old tendency was that David knows best and there's certain basic things that we can leave Jesus and his way with, but there's certain things that you better not leave that to spirit. And I needed to be dislodged from those things. So what I've learned in working with people over these 25, 30 years has been that oftentimes some kind of a pretty big seeming change can actually be the most disturbing, like you coming here, the most disturbing, but on the other hand, the most beneficial. Like with Hurston, when we travel, when we would go back to visit her parents at Red Beach, New Zealand, that the longer she would stay at her parents' house when we were traveling, she would like shift back into daughter Kirsten. And when she was traveling with me, we'd be talking about all these things, but she would like morph back when she was there with Jackie and Roger start to morph. And there was a loyalty there to the family and a loyalty to being the good daughter. And it was like the glaives would come and the words would still come out, the course of miracles words. But something had taken over the Kirsten doll. And it was like, go ahead, say the words if you want, you're still a daughter. You'll always be my daughter. And nothing, no book will ever change that. It was real thick. And with Suzanne, Suzanne was married. And her husband's name, if you put a T cross on the end of it, it would be Christ. It was Chris, C-H-R-I-S. She was one cross, one letter short of Christ. But this whole place that you're experiencing now was built with all kinds of people coming to volunteer and support. And there was builders and this whole place rose up from a little shack. That's all that was here. And Suzanne got out here with her plexus and her high heels and her purple robe. She was in the high life. But the only thing that she started with was a little shack. And then all that grew up through miracles, like people coming and Jesus sent in legions to do this whole thing. And then when the legions left, it was just down to this husband and wife concept, which is very deeply anchored. It was almost like, come on, Jesus, now come on and infuse this little couple concept with all the glory of the Lord. And Jesus was like, no, no, it doesn't go that way. You bring the concepts to me and they disappear. I don't come into the concept. No amount of meditating by the river. No amount of Chris doing hernia. His keys were going bad. He had a bad back. He was playing the slave to the princess. And the princess had a plan. And the plan was, I'm going to bring the light of Jesus out here to the desert. And I'm going to ascend. And Chris was playing the part I nicknamed him Thor. Because when I came here, the princess was meditating and listening to my takes, but Thor was going down. He was trying to maintain a 29 acre retreat property all by himself while she meditated. And so then when she listened to a lot of my tapes back in Cassettes, and I think she kept calm, come out here. And in the beginning, I would come out here and we would have wonderful encounters. But it was still, she was going to bring David as a part of that plan to have this glorious retreat center. And then that, and I'd say no, it just doesn't go that way. But then it come again. And then it come to the point where it'd be like, I need to just let go of the control of this whole thing. I need to let it go. I need to donate it. I need to turn it over in some big way. Thor was not happy about that. He had worked his butt off. He was, again, Thor bowed, teeth going bad, and a hernia, which he had not had operated on, all for the princess, so they could sell this place and get the money and go all traveling together with the nest egg. That's how it works, right? In the world, you sell the business eventually. You get the nest egg and you live high life before you die. You enjoy your retirement. Jesus doesn't work that way. He was like saying no. So me coming out, coming out, it started to be that when you are trying to hold something in place, still trying to bring the truth into illusion, that Thor mistakenly burned down the barn. The neighbor's million dollar barn, Thor burned that down when he was doing a controlled burn and wasn't paying attention. Then Thor shot a cow, shot a cow. And then she said, how did that happen? Well, he shot it in the air, but somehow the bullet went through. And then the cow was pregnant. The princess made Thor bury the cow, but not knowing that the cow was pregnant and out of the grave. Jesus is going to have to use extreme examples because if you were trying to bring the truth into illusion, Jesus was going to go no way. Yes, that she was throwing out the horse. She loves horses, but the horse threw her and she broke a femur in two places. And you were scheduled to come. And I was scheduled to come when that happened. You talk about with the heart condition. These things are just the way that it goes. It's just Jesus getting the attention like saying, no, you're studying my book. And the gist of it is to bring the illusions to the truth. But when we persist in trying to bring the truth to the illusion, it's like we're trying to spiritualize matter. It's like we're trying to imbue matter, time and space and people and objects with spirit. Why do you think the Tower of Babel, they were trying to reach God by building a tower, by building a tower into the skies? That's one of the most extreme examples in history of trying to reach a God in the sky through man-made attempts. And it just doesn't work. One of the things I've been aware of is there's nothing I can do. I'm forced into a position that I recognize that I've never been in before, where I was muscular. I lost a bunch of weight, frail and flabby. And whatever it is, I know there's a message in that. And what I'm doing is I need to do nothing in the sense of I can't draw another plan or 15 more medicines or some kind of special way ever. Yeah, it's almost required. Like, if we move ahead with the story too, where Suzanne did give over, she ended up going through divorce and there wasn't giving over of the edge retreat. But even though it was given over legally to a nonprofit organization, to a church, where she had no control over it, that was just the beginning of the rent. Because then when you came back from Cincinnati, she would come around on every wall, everything of what had been given over had a story. Everything had a story. Everything had a past association. The legally signing it over to a church or a nonprofit was just the first step. A lot of times people are afraid of that step. They're terrified of that step. And yet that was just the beginning of the rents, because every single thing had a story. Actually, it was donated over to a church. I never planned none of us. Kirsten, I think we were in Cincinnati one time when Kirsten said Jesus was telling us to use the church symbol. I remember at the time my partner Jason said, I'm not here in church. No, he'd been involved in churches and it's in this. And so in donating it over, here is being donated over to become a monastery. The part of the edge retreat is that Suzanne had a giant Buddha statue. And even Buddha was taken away. I think it was a big, big statue that was out by the pond. Serene. So every time I would come back, there would be something, you know, like, gone. Somebody had taken Buddha. Spotless mind. Everything started disappearing. And just the let go, the let go just kept happening. Every time I would turn around, there would be something else. And yeah, it's if it were so simple as to just turn everything over, you know, personal possessions. And then I remember one time just Jesus said, I could hear it in my mind, you know, you think you've done all these great steps, but now can you give me your judgment? You actually practice forgiveness. It's almost like a clearing away needed to occur so that I could, I could actually get down to what I wasn't doing and thought I was doing for all those years, which was practicing the forgiveness of the Course of Miracles. But actually what I was doing was I was managing my spiritual path and I was managing my healing, not actually forgiving. I could get to it's just an illusion. It's just an illusion. But I didn't get in touch with that guilt that was so suppressed. And like you, when I came to community, I was never more unhappy. I thought I was happier before. I don't know. And a lot of darkness started to arise, but I was in a place where it could. And I kept hearing before David came, you need to go deeper. And I was out here meditating. I had a plan in place. And it was a good spiritual plan. I mean, I had a call for God. That's what brought me out here. And so it just really got very, very deep in my mind. I could, I could hear this call, but I didn't know how. I thought I was doing everything the way that I thought I should, you know. But what happened was when all those things, like when you're saying these things are happening in the body, and it's like, there I am laying on the ground. I finally thought, huh, after 2008 and all those things, I thought, I must still have my own plan in place because nothing is going the way that I wanted to go. And that's when I really pushed the plan, truly really pushed the plan because I was out. It was like, you're stuck. You're not willing to move. And I just kept getting hammered. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh my God, I have a spiritual plan for my awakening. I'm going to sit by that river. I was just going to move down the road with the pocket full of money. Still sit by the river. But it's like, almost like when those things start to, you know, it starts to get so intense. And even when you say it, there's something about it when you say it that there's something in my heart that says this is not, this is an advance, not a retreat. And the Course talks about you have to go through this darkness to get to the light. And we have to let go of how we got here. We have to let go of what brought us here, you know, like the branching in the road. It's like, how you got here no longer matters. It like brings you to the present moment. And it's like, what's being offered now? You know, and it was just, it just completely threw everything from my past. It was just like everything just got white. And yes, there's still thoughts that would come up in attachment and think like that. But there's something about what you say that I can, I can just witness to you that it's like, it's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. It's hard. And it's, and that's the thing that most Course students don't want to go through is they don't want to go through that darkness to get to the light. It's too intense. And that's why all of a sudden, the mighty companion, you know, if you think about it, I look around and what are my witnesses? Look, my witnesses, you know, this place has been completely used for only one purpose. It's like, I remember talking to David and having him say things to me like he couldn't imagine having these kinds of conversations that I was having with people. And I thought, how do you not have conversations about, you know, just regular things in life. And now it's the same. There's only one purpose. So all these, all that's used now is for the Holy Spirit and the message of truth. So I just feel like it's a very, very deep journey and something about just, you know, letting go of the past and how you got here to keep coming into my mind. I don't know what that means, but we're just right here with you. I don't seem to have any choice. The reason that they call Jesus the master is because Jesus is the master. He is behind every nuance, every seeming little tiny thing that occurs. The master, the stroke of the master is there. And you can't see that, but there comes a point where it's like it comes on so strong, like tears just start streaming down like, oh, what a master, because we're talking years ago, we're talking 2008, that's like eight years ago. But more recently, who was the thing where Suzanne was still, you know how they sometimes talk about hit the glass ceiling in where she all of a sudden started hitting this ceiling, like hitting the ceiling. And it was like praying and praying and out here and years had gone by and huge shifts in transportation, but transformations have hit in the ceiling. I don't know, I don't know what it is. She was aware there still was some body image thoughts, some thoughts about aging, thoughts, you know, they were still in the tumbler. But it was like a rock, like getting past, some of you know, thoughts around fear of aging, fear of death, body image thoughts, I'm to this, I'm to that, this is sagging, this is too this, you know, those are in the tumbler. And so, and how does the master handle that? Well, this, I got an email from a man in Portugal. And he, he was literally losing all of his five senses. He was going into these states of mind where all of his five senses were deteriorating rapidly. And he was a young man. He wasn't up in years at all. He was very young, 23 years old. And through these mystical experiences, the five senses were deteriorating. And he wrote to me in desperation, like, I'm getting really afraid and frightened, my family, my parents are frightened, you know, they didn't, what, how do you diagnose that? 23 years old and losing all five senses, couldn't read, couldn't listen, you know, wasn't started to be unable to listen to things. I can't watch your YouTubes anymore. I can't listen to your talks, you know, and fear of starting to rise up, you know, like the whole world's falling away. And I remember talking to Kirsten and saying, Kirsten, can you do a call with him? And then Kirsten has an amazing call. And then it became quite clear was he needs to come to the monastery. He needs to come to the monastery. He needs to come to the Portugal monastery. So he did. He came here and through the nurturing with Suzanne, Michael, all the ones here, he started to regain his ability to hear things. Even watching a Jesus movie, he could he could barely watch it because of the intensity in his mind of losing his senses. So he slowly got nurtured back, nurtured back. His parents were like, it's a miracle, you know, this is who would have thought going to a rural monastery in Utah would pull him out of that. But then it's Jesus comes in and starts to use it as Suzanne get involved in a relationship with a 23-year-old man, the nutcracker, only the master. You've got body image stats, you've got raising thoughts and everything. Only the master can come up with that. And all of the nutcracker. And wasn't it a surprise? She think this is that? She was like, no way. No way. But Jesus, oh, yes way. Yes way. So, you see, we have to be willing to accept whatever because the master knows the way to crack the nut of the ego. And the master knows the way. There is no other way. The ego is not going to help you crack that nut. The ego doesn't want to crack itself. It wants to puff itself up. It's the childhood song. And the thing is, it's like this deep plan of awakening, it's so profound. He had this childhood song. And his mother used to sing to him that he'd forgotten all these years. And then when he was going to come here, he started to remember this childhood song. His mother used to sing to him. And it was, oh, it just feels so profound. It's like, go and be with Suzanne by the river. He will awaken you. She will take you to God. That was the childhood song. This is amazing. You can't make this stuff up. To share, like how once the mind is truly given over to one purpose, and you accept the means, you see, you have to accept the means that are given. The means that the personal self would not choose. Because they undo the purpose of power. And that's the thing. In one of my one-on-ones, there was this confusion that was coming, but actually the way was shown. And she already knew it. So it's like this acceptance of the means. And it's beautiful when you do that. Because there's huge resistance to the light, and there's huge resistance to chopping the concepts and dissolving them in that light. Because they're the only thing that we've ever known to make us feel safe. So there's innocence underneath this. You know, it's like there's innocence. But in order to allow the mind to be filled with the truth and the light of who we truly are, we have to accept the means. And we keep saying, we want to study the Course in Miracles. We want to hear the Holy Spirit. I had a plan in my mind. And every single time something would happen, I would just, I would just try to go deeper into my own plan. And then finally, it was just like so obvious. It's like, I have to let go of my plan. And it scared me. You bet it scared me. It was like, I don't know what's going to happen to me. You know? And so that's why when you come, and it's like there's just this honor of even turning towards the light, because there's such courage for an authentic awakening, for authentic forgiveness. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. So we have to practice this true deep forgiveness of all the things that we hold true. I mean, can you imagine the ingeniousness of the evil thought system? Like all the things that we value are the things that enslave us. They're not the bad things or the good things. I was the poster child for all the good things. I had a good Thor husband. I had a great face. You know? I had a horse, a cat, I had it all. You know? I had a great family. I had it all. And I still have the experience of the family, not in the way that it used to be held. But when I see them, it's glorious. You know? But I have a different mission. And so things had to be looked at in the mind and loosened and let go of. But there is not a sacrifice there. I feel that there was a sacrifice when I was born good. Yes, I was afraid. But I love to be able to witness and say, there is no sacrifice. Are you kidding me? Look at our life. It's beautiful. It's a testimony of, I've got you. I have you. Just be willing to let me have you and stop hanging onto your plan. In Calico, you know, even the steps you've taken, you know, it's like the spirit, all the angels are just cheering you on. And each step can seem big. But actually, it's just, it's again, what direction am I moving in? Am I unwinding? You know, those are the questions that we would ask, even when Jason and I were down by the river with Suzanne and she was talking. I was sharing the new plan. She was sharing the new plan, the new house. And I'll build a place. I said, I'll build a place for you just so you can come like little huts by the river and you, Jason, can come. Yeah, we were down there by the river. And then she went into like a 10 minute spiel about how wonderful her husband was. And she went on and on and on, how wonderful, and wonderful, wonderful. And I think it was Jason who asked the question, wasn't it something to the effect of, is your husband helping you with the healing of your mind? Jason asked. And I burst out laughing. And then, and as soon as I laughed because he's beautiful and he was wonderful, but he was not interested in spirituality. So I burst out laughing and I would always have all these deep conversations with friends, you know, not my husband. But I did. I burst out laughing. But in the moment I laughed, I felt the whole crap of the universe. You're done. And, and, and David, what you said, David was, he sat up and he goes, I can't imagine getting all of that from a person. My safety, my security, what a beautiful blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these, I thought I was bragging. Oh, all these accolades. And then when he said that and Jason said that it was like a double whammy. And all of a sudden I just, I knew I was done. And I, I could, it was like I could feel it in my heart. Like, oh my god, I have missed those nine chapters on specialness. And, you know, I've been out here managing my healing. And so it was very powerful, very powerful. Yeah. First off, thank you so much for your generous sharing. I mean, you didn't necessarily share it, but thank you for being a part of the generous sharing. It's a good story. You know, I, I just want to say thank you for sharing, because I say your heart issues is the gold mine. I mean, basically four years ago I was in hospice. I had terminal fourth stage uterine cancer that had metastasized. The last doctor I saw said, come back in a month, this is before national health care. And he said, come back in another month and we'll tell you where it's moved to in your lungs. And I was on oxygen 24 seven. I had, you know, a 40 foot tube to a machine. And so I just say, use that to see differently. Ask God to see that differently. I say, you're just opening your heart up. I say, that's a beautiful thing. I mean, this and I get the get this place on some level. And I don't know where it's coming from or how this is sacred here. This is sacred. And it's like this is where we can come. And I've told more people that are really ill to get their butts up to this monastery. None of them have come because it's not for the weak will. It's not. It's not. No, it's not for the ninnies. I could hardly walk. I couldn't walk. I was hanging on to my bed post when noob Sanchez was talking to me about the end of death. And I could barely stand there without holding on to the bed. I could barely get to the bathroom. And it's like, I didn't do this. Because when I got cancer, I was a chiropractor. I did everything my entire life to prevent cancer, which is perfect. What do people that want to avoid cancer get? Cancer. And it was like, and you know, and I've shared, I share with many, it's like immediately I gave up all diets, nutrition, vitamins, herbs. I started drinking coffee again. I'm still loving it. I mean, it was just kind of none of that stuff is the answer. It's what David is saying. You have got to bring the illusion to the truth. You have to. It cannot operate under any other circumstances. And that was, I mean, talk of, I say the course of miracles, if it's working, it turns you inside out and upside down. And nothing will ever be the same. And in my world, I mean, I'm just so great, but I feel like I just landed in the mothership. I mean, I've been out there in my little solo jet in space, trying to figure out how to do this with all my, with all my beautiful and loving metaphorical readers of a course of miracles. And I couldn't be around them anymore. They were making me sicker and sicker. Oh, just choose, just be peaceful. It's like, fuck you. I'm in hospice. I can't walk and I'm on oxygen. I can't find peace in this. I'm not peace. I'm not happy. I can't even, I can't even make believe I'm happy. And it's like, that's, that's good news. I say it's the gold mine. I say, if you have an illness, use the illness. The illness is perfect. It's where we can get, we can find our voice for God. That's, that's the gift that we give ourselves. Holy spirit didn't give it to us. We gave it to us. God, you know, we want to wake up. You know, I asked God once, it's like, because I went through a nasty foreclosure too. I mean, I have similar stories. Oh my God, we could, we need to go out and drink some time and share stories. You know, it's like, I went through a foreclosure before and then I got cancer and I said to God, it's like, okay, you know, I thought it was a really good course of miracles person. What the fuck is going on here? I mean, everything that could happen seems to be going sour. God said to me very clearly, he said, as a child, do you remember when you had a really bad dream, like a really bad dream? You would wake yourself up. You're getting yourself a really bad dream. So you can wake up. And it's totally doable. And this is, all I can say, this is like Mecca for a course of miracles. It is in my world. I'm, I'm the one that Suzanne was saying that I shared with the means. She's providing me with the means to really move through and be the voice of Christ that I've always wanted to be. But my plan and my home and all of those things that I've, all the ducks, I had all the ducks lined up, the perfect job, the perfect horse, the perfect family, all of them, they all had to get knocked down. I had to kill them off because that's not awakening. Awakening is going, oh my god, I'm not happy. My heart is about ready to pound out of the chest. I'm going to have a heart attack. I'm going to stop breathing. And then I'm dead. That's what's real. And that's where this is literal interpretation of a course of miracles. This is not for sissies. And it works. But it really means you have to bring, you have to bring yourself to the table and you brought yourself to the table. And it's like, I just, what a gift you are for me. I'm a chiropractor. I've been wanting to help people my whole life. I've done nothing but abuse them. I'm a shrink. I think that's, this people with those views that you both have really led long and really dedicated lives with the course. But when you come at the course, from the perspective of the human being, there's a part in your heart that's just working with the course day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year going, I hope, I hope, I hope this works. I hope it works. I hope it works. But there's a desperation behind, I hope it works. Like, it's so radical. And the thing about it is when you come into contact with people that have actually come into a living experience of it, because it's the difference between meeting somebody talking about yoga or non-duality and going over and you happen to be wandering someday in India and you get into this house, you don't know it, you happen to be in the same room with Sai Baba. And you just go, I mean, I know people who have done that who actually, who was the rebirther when the woman, Sandra Ray, when she actually stumbled upon what she thought was Sai Baba was, it was a devotee and she just felt this ecstasy and this love and everything. And he was this glowing rating and she was like, oh my God, I've just come across Sai Baba. It wasn't, but although it was a devotee, he pointed like this. Then she walked into the room with Sai Baba and terror, when she walked into the room with Sai Baba, terror rose in her heart, just the most frightened she's ever been. It showed that the Course teaching of it, you're not afraid of fear or death, you're afraid of love. When she walked into the room with Sai Baba, the terror rose. She had never experienced anything like that. So when you start to get in touch with those that are in an actual experience, that is where the unlearning can really accelerate in a very true, authentic way. Because it's the lack of investment in the world that brings about this experience of presence. You can't speak your way into it or try to project your way into it or affirm your way into it. You actually have to go through the darkness to the light. And therefore we're just grateful, we just see how the symbols are being used, but Christ is very welcoming. He's saying, come, come, come unto me and I will bring you peace. I will bring you shelter from the ego. It's an actual living experience, the way it does open. You know, you're like a child discovering just one door. And the doors are not sealed shut. And they're not extraordinarily difficult, but you still have to face those emotions one at a time. So we do feel that sacredness. We feel that you feel like the presence is just using the symbols. You know, it's not in the land, it's not in the earth, but it's very real and it's very present. And for those that open to it and come unto it, well, like a child with open arms, then that is everything. That's everything. Just gonna ask, bringing the, you know, kind of this world into the truth, is there a kind of a method or a way instead of just, you know, it seems as though it's not as easy as just saying I'm putting it on the altar or I hand this over. Like, is there any other things stepped yet practically to not plan? I don't know. It's almost the lack of doing, but is there something to be done? I don't know. Well, you know, I think just our joining when we join together, that's what this session's about. You know, you can feel the practicality of it. We're here sharing very strong parables and metaphors that are very, very direct. And we may all laugh at them, but we also can appreciate the intensity of the attachment and the attraction to those things. So I have found that it's just like when you feel a genuine draw and a genuine calling, when you start just moving in the direction of that, you're doing everything you can, just to even go in the direction. A lot of times there's a call for specifics, and those do arise from time to time where it seems like there's a leaping off point. And just like in The Matrix, when Morpheus jumps across as I'm trying to free your mind and jumps from one skyscraper building to the next, at first they seem huge. But after a while, those jumps, and there'll be many of them, will start to be easier and easier. You feel more lightness, like you can fly and jump across skyscrapers. It's the first ones always seem the most difficult, because there's so much conditioning that says don't even try it. You're going down, you're going to fall, don't even go there, don't even make the attempt. And I think that's where it's helpful to have mighty companions, it's helpful to have wayshowers. I even see that that's the method that Jesus used with me, that in 1991, when I was first going to be taken out on these, I didn't know at the time, years of just traveling around, Jesus was saying, well, we're going to start off with the very first trip. We're going to start off with meeting those that are devoted to the Course, that have given their lives over for working with the Course. So the very first trip down to the Southwest and everything back in 1991 was going down there and going to the Southwest and being hosted in a circle of atonement and Robert and then his wife, Susan and Tom Dunn and so on and so forth, then going across. Next he took me to meet Beverly Hutchinson McNuff and her mother in an ally Miracle Distribution Center out the coast to, at that point, California Miracle Center. Tony wasn't there at the time, but I had people talking to me from the church, the Course in Miracles Church, as I'm going up the coast of California, telling people, Course students, I'm going up to California Miracle Center. They said, basically they said, don't waste your time, don't waste your time going to California Miracle Center. I said, what? Jesus is telling me to go there. They said, don't even waste your time. It's a church. It's a Course in Miracles Church. They're ordaining ministers. Don't even waste your time. Well, I left. I said, what did we do, Jesus? We're going to California Miracle Center. You know, it's, and then on up to meet my friend Dorothy and with the island who had worked at Roscoe, lived this caning gloria for years all the way across. So basically, trip trip trip, going around God's country place, we're going to God's country place, which was the forerunner of Endeavor Academy. Jesus took me there. He was taking me all over the place, but it was just to the ones that had dedicated their life to working with the Course. Feel the gift of dedication. Feel the gift of devotion. You know, so every little step reinforces moving in the right direction and you don't have to know the way years ahead. All you have to do is get into that feel. What feels like you're moving in a helpful direction and that's what Calico has been speaking of. She just felt it and she started to follow those prompts, those little nudges, as you've been doing, the Miracle's virtual. There was a prompt and then I've seen you every single time. There you are. There's Alexa. There she is again. There she is again. There she is again. You know, again, again, again, Mystery School. Oh, I'm going there, you know, and there you were out in California. You and Rita. Oh, we find each thing so they were both going to the Mystery School there. Someone, a mighty companion, both came here. You know, those little steps just start to unfold and you don't have to know how it's all going to happen. You just have to follow those steps. Yeah, I had people would ask me, you know, why are you doing this? Why David Hoffmeister? We need to do nothing. You know, they would take profound teachings and make them into spiritual cliches. And what happened was I would just answer and say, because it's what was given. It was obvious. You know, it's like, I mean, I had been spiritual window shopping for quite some time, right? Little of this, little of that, little of this. And I kept hearing you have to choose one. And I did. I chose the course when I came out here just to heal my mind. And then all this started happening. But people were very much like, what, you know, why do you have to join a community? Why, well, for me, it's what was given. Why would I say no to what the spirit is just making so obvious? Now, if I would have stood there and argued and said, oh, I might want to go off and, you know, go to Tibet for a while or do something else, it's like it's really dishonoring what's being laid out in front of us. And it really is about following. It's not about trying to figure it out. It's right there in front of you. If your heart really wants it, it's right there in front of you. And it will just take you by the hand and you don't have to guess. But it's this constant resistance to actually taking those steps because of the fear of love. So it's like, I just, I just say, oh, gosh, I prayed, I kept hearing you need to go deeper, you need to go deeper. I didn't know what that meant. And then I get in my inbox, something from this one, and it's like, that's the same voice that, you know, and I've been to a lot of teachers and he did not fit my idea. You know, I wanted a luchi guy. But it was clear that all the concepts would be broken, you know, all of them, including my idea of spiritual teacher. So it was just so beautiful, like so grateful for what is given. It's so simple when you're willing to take what's given. And no sacrifice. I think you realize that how deeply rooted the belief in sacrifice and that fear is, that of course it's going to take the master to wash that one away. That's like, that's like a jugular, the guilt and fear of that, that sacrifice idea. I mean, you know, look at even with Catholicism in the name of Jesus, the first church, penance, sacrifice, you know, and there's a lot of guilt there. And Jesus will address that in the Course. Many sincere Christians, you know, he will say, there are many that have a good intent to follow Christ and we have to acknowledge that they had good intent, but he said, trust not your good intention. He comes even in with that depth of that. What I've noticed is that nothing is wrenched away from you. He says you won't be hurled, you know, into the light, you won't be hurled into eternity. The way it was in simple terms was, I applied the Course and I took everything that was coming to me through the Course as my own lesson. Even when I would try to, what about this one, that one, Jesus would always say, your lesson, sure lesson, sure lesson, like a broken record, sure lesson. I said, sure lesson, sure lesson, don't, what about, no, sure lesson. It was just, he had to drill that home, no, just your lesson, that's it. Don't, don't even go there with this, another person, another path, another place, another teacher, don't even go there. And then as that came in and I became lighter and lighter and happier and happier and happier, that love draws forth witnesses to itself. That's how the mighty companions come in is through the purification of your own heart, of your own mind. Then the mighty companions show up as reflections of what? Of your, of the mind, of the one mind. That's the way it works. It's not that there are special people or more loving people. You just start to attract because your thoughts are becoming purified and the whole world is just a reflection of your thoughts, you attract the mighty companions. You don't make that special, you don't make that unique, you don't make it different, you just go hallelujah. There's some purification happening. And then I noticed that around, it was right around 1989 when people started showing up to me and saying the most curious thing, but the funniest thing, they would come to me and they would say, you are my teacher and I would be like, what? What is that? And then Jesus would say, remember the teacher's manual, the student's ready, the teacher appears and the teacher's ready, you know. And I thought, oh yeah, there's all this stuff, my levels of teaching and all these different things and the teacher's manual is there. It's like, oh yeah, I did read that. So then that started happening, but I just saw it as people wanting to come and spend more time and wanting to move in with me. And so the initial stages of that were the first of a tiny little community of people wanting to live close by. You see how Jesus is so gentle because none of us, most of us have grown up. I didn't know anything about communities or anything. So friends wanting to live close by. Okay, all right, I can handle that. It's just friends wanting to live close by. And then the crack is open so you don't know what's coming after that. But friends wanting, so then little by little, you know, people would, we'd spend some time together, we went up to Michigan, the little community up at Traverse City, Michigan, out to Colorado on Monroe, down in downtown Denver, had a little community, it was back up to Michigan, Lansing, Michigan. There was a little one, a little one down to Cincinnati and eventually a little peace house where Kirsten, that's where Kirsten came across and joined me. It was this tiny little, it was like a cottage, a four bedroom cottage, so to speak, that was built in 1800s, 1849 or some 47 or something. And then that has continued on. Now, with the monastery, when we first got the call to come out here, the people around me were like, we have everything. We have little houses on the street. They were like, why are you tall? You have to pay attention, David. I've been looking for a retreat. Here it is. You're tall, they're saying, no, you're tall. The Mormons, the Mormons, you know, to be careful and but we aren't in charge. None of us, you know, we found, found ourselves kind of watching and watching and, you know, we've got ones coming up in Europe and Mexico and down in Australia and here, but it's involuntary. The plan is being orchestrated by Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We're just beholders and the very things that seem like big steps for people like leading a family, leading a partner, selling a house, doing this, doing that, you know, you start to realize, Francis was saying recently that these, these things, these configurations that the world holds in such high self esteem are really so tiny that Jesus says, it's not that you ask for too much, you ask for far too little. It's like clinging to these little configurations like, oh, I would die if this one left or I would die if I lost my daughter or lost my father or my mother, you know, those are so tiny. And even Francis recently yesterday was talking about finances, all this stuff about how important finances are. And from the higher perspective, it's just Jesus just using the symbols to free the mind. It's all for the blessing of freeing the mind. It's just the ego projects all this meaning onto these things as if they're so important. And Francis used the word ridiculous, she said. I'm seeing how it's ridiculous to believe to put so much faith in those. Yeah, people would say to me, are you, you know, when I was handing everything over to the foundation and letting go of personal ownership, people would say, well, do you have something in writing that you can at least live there forever? And I would say no. And then it was like, to give all to all, it was like so, I was so grateful when I, when I first met David and listened to some of the teachings, I recognized the truth in my own mind. It wasn't really about David. It was about, I knew that, that it had shown up in my mind like I was ready. Like that clarity was a symbol. It wasn't ever following David as a person, but it was the spirit and I could feel it in my heart. And it was like, I was so grateful. And I literally had to talk, you know, like really say, you need to pay attention. I want to do this, you know, there was no agenda. And I hear often that, you know, there's these, these things set out there that we have to give all our money over when we, you know, are with David Hofmeister. And I got to tell you, first of all, it's not the truth, but I'm so happy that I was able to have the avenue to where I could let go in a safe way and see that what I was letting go of was actually holding me back. It was actually nothing. That's my way. That's what was given for me. It's a highly individualized path. But when I met him, it was like I knew in my mind, he was a symbol of clarity in my mind. And I honored that symbol in my mind, not as a person. And it's like, oh my gosh, thank you, because I had been through so many teachers and, you know, listening and, you know, doing the whole smorgasbord. And then when it happened, it was like I recognized that was me. That was my mind lighting up. It's time. It's time now. Because the deepest desire in my heart was for awakening. And because it was the deepest desire in my heart, it was answered. And then the container was given for the dismantling and going through the fear and going through the letting go of self-contact. And then to be able to just have this experience of expansion. And every time an idle falls, the mind gets lighter. And you think that that idle was so important. And it's like, oh my God, it feels so much better without that idea. So, yeah. There's no idle worship here. There's no following a guru. It's following the Holy Spirit and it's being grateful for the context to be set for the mind to be able to rest and fall back through forgiveness, to fall back into the abstract light that we're so fearful of. And that's what forgiveness does. To give those thoughts and just prepare the mind to go back into the mystical, to go back home. It's just, I'm amazed all the time of how graceful and how beautiful and how powerful the symbols are when the mind is made up like, I'm done. I want only the truth now. And that comes when it comes. And I was kicking a scream for quite a bit of it, actually. It wasn't like, la, la, la. It was like, damn, damn, damn, ah, David says, this path is like, damn, damn, damn, ah, and I've said a lot of down. Oh, very good. How we doing, Kristen? Yep. It's time to go back into the silence. That was to Mars and back. That was how the stratosphere came about. I just want to thank both of you because I had a question about the history of this place. And so I'm just so grateful that you answered it and also about you, because I know David's on YouTube and I'm reading Kristen's book, but I need nothing about you. So it's been a little wonderful for me. I always wanted to say thank you for sharing your stories too, because it helps us because we struggle too with all kinds of stuff like that. The water's fine. Come on in. I really like the way you explain it too, because I really understand it. It's right in there. My dress. So maybe a song to take us... Do-be-do-be-do. You're crazy. Strangers. Isn't that from Strangers and the Night? Yeah, that's it. Exchanging glances. What were the chances? Yeah. This is a great... bringing the good into bed. We're going to sing together. It's about eight minutes, I feel. Should I just really drop into it? Yeah, this is another song just to, like, fiddle. Then come back. Come back in. It's very beautiful, very deep, but it's all about just truly remember who you are, what your hands are for, what your life is for, what your heart is for. And then there's a little part of that where it says that life is beautiful, it's horrible, it's beautiful, it's horrible, and it just sounds... it's perfect to go with what we were just going into today, because bringing the illusions to the truth, there's the beautiful illusions and the horrible illusions. It's really about bringing all of it in the light.